Google Redirects Search Traffic In Rift With Kazakhstan

Google has taken the drastic action of redirecting visitors to its Kazakhstan site, google.kz, to a page in Kazakh at google.com.

The move is an escalation of tensions between Kazakhstan and Google, after the former Soviet republic brought in legislation in September last year, requiring .kz domain names to point to servers actually located in that country.

Google’s action comes after that country’s government warned it would begin enforcing that law.

Domestic servers

This would have required Google to route all search queries on its Kazakhstan site through local servers, instead of handling the requests on Google servers located in its purpose build data centres across the world.

Google is concerned that this would create a fractured and non-open Internet.

“The genius of the Internet has always been its open infrastructure, which allows anyone with a connection to communicate with anyone else on the network,” wrote Google’s senior vice president Bill Coughran in a blog post. “Some governments, however, are attempting to create borders on the web without full consideration of the consequences their actions may have on their own citizens and the economy.”

“Last month, the Kazakhstan Network Information Centre notified us of an order issued by the Ministry of Communications and Information in Kazakhstan that requires all .kz domain names, such as google.kz, to operate on physical servers within the borders of that country,” he wrote. “This requirement means that Google would have to route all searches on google.kz to servers located inside Kazakhstan.”

Free Expression

Coughran said that Google found itself in a difficult situation, as creating borders on the web raises important questions for it not only because of network efficiency but also about user privacy and free expression.

“If we were to operate google.kz only via servers located inside Kazakhstan, we would be helping to create a fractured Internet,” he wrote. “So we have decided to redirect users that visit google.kz  to google.com in Kazakh. Unfortunately, this means that Kazakhstani users will experience a reduction in search quality as results will no longer be customised for Kazakhstan.”

Coughran warned that measures that “force Internet companies to choose between taking actions that harm the open web, or reducing the quality of their services, hurt users.”

Big Trouble, Little China

This is not the first time that Google has opted to redirect search queries in response to government regulations. Google famously clashed with the Chinese government last year after the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents and human-rights activists are hacked into.

This led to Google announcing that it would no longer censor its search results in China, a move denounced by the Chinese government. Now when users access google.cn, they are redirected to  google.com.hk, which provides an unfiltered search engine, free of censored material.

And Google last week announced that it had disrupted a phishing scam that duped senior US government officials, Chinese political activists and others into giving up their Gmail passwords so that an attacker could read and forward their email messages. The Chinese media predictably reacted angrily to Google’s statement that it had traced cyber-attacks on Gmail accounts to that country

Meanwhile in Europe, French President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed tech leaders, including Google’s Eric Schmidt ahead of the recent G8 summit, and urged them to work with governments over internet regulations.

He said that countries cannot allow completely unchecked Internet use.